Dani Moonstar's a survivor (ms_moonstar) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-07-15 21:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, dani moonstar (mirage), lorna dane (polaris) |
"Yeah, but just you watch."
Who: Dani Moonstar, Lorna Dane
What: Hanging out, talking.
When: Like dude, way back (07/01). The day of this net exchange.
Where: Urdnot Ranch
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13 for mentions of pot smoking, no actual pot was smoked. Triggers for mild mentions of drugs (pot) and alcoholism I think?
Status: Complete
It hadn’t taken Dani very long to find all of the things she needed. She came back to the ranch with grocery bags filled with yarn and hooks hanging off of her arms, pot tucked into her pocket, and carrying a drink holder, too. There was a small paper bag cradled between the drinks, which contained one cake donut.
“Here you are, madame. A green tea and a cake donut, exactly as ordered. Along with enough yarn to keep a bunch of teenagers occupied for a few hours, and some other things you requested.”
Lorna laughed and took her tea, hopping up onto the counter of the front desk area. No visitors were scheduled for the day, and she was just watching the desk until the next interpersonal disagreement sprang up. “You’re too good to me, Dani.” She said with a grin. “Oh man, this bakery is amazing, too.” She tore into the donut eagerly. It occurred to her that she was already pretty hungry when she started poking her finger in the bag to pick up any loose crumbs. “So how do you like being back here?”
"It's the usual mix of life-affirming danger and pain in the ass excitement. Everyone questions my sanity for coming back here, and they're probably right." Dani grabbed her gigantic iced coffee out of the holder and tossed it into the trash, then joined Lorna up on the counter. She liked sitting on counters, "It's gotten better now that my animals aren't speaking english at me anymore."
Lorna giggled. “I’m so sad I couldn’t hear what Champion and Max were saying. Your dog seems a lot happier with you around.” Her dog and Alex’s were at Mac’s orchard. She figured the Ranch needed to be her first priority these days. “I don’t think you’re insane for coming back. If you were still dreaming, and still had your powers, then the only people on Earth who could accept you for everything you are live here. That’s a pretty important thing to have.”
"Doom mostly cussed me out, Samuel L. Jackson style. And my dog sounded like Queen Latifah for a while, so I'm not really sure you missed much." Dani chuckled, and took a long sip off of her coffee, "But yeah. That's pretty much the only thing I have going for me right now. Is at least I have an extended family here."
“Me too. I mean, I don’t really have a normal life anymore.” She shrugged. “That doesn’t make it bad here, despite the zombies and horrible dreams.” Her tea was delicious. “I wish I still had my powers, I used to go smoke on the roof but I can’t climb up there on my own.”
"Your powers aren't back yet?" Dani asked, with a raised brow. She'd heard about the power loss stuff going on, but that had all been right before she'd shown up. Most people had theirs back by now, "That M-day thing didn't get you, did it? I mean, in the dream world. The one you mentioned."
She hadn't personally dreamed about losing her own powers. She didn't ever want to.
Lorna shook her head. “I dreamed about M day every night for a week. When everyone else got their powers back, I didn’t.” She shrugged. Truthfully she missed her powers more than words could say. It felt like she’d lost a major limb. That feeling scared her a little bit. She felt all kinds of mixed up about the whole thing.
"I'm really sorry, Lorna. That sucks. I was so afraid of my powers when they first kicked in..." Dani skipped the story about how Scott had tried to kill himself in her kitchen, but that had been among the reasons she'd been afraid of them, "... just like in the dreams, I thought I was a bad omen, or cursed or something. But now I couldn't really imagine life without them."
Lorna nodded. “My powers were okay when they first kicked in, but I lost control of them recently.” She made a face. “I would like to have them back. Especially with things getting kind of dangerous out there.”
"But you know, even when things get worse, you've always got that problem like... your powers might not work at all on the thing you're facing. Mine don't, on these things. The few I've gotten to fight, it was all fancy sword work." Dani wrinkled her nose a bit, "So just watch, they'd be immune to your magnetic fields too or something."
“I don’t know, they’re technology based, right? And even if I can’t directly affect them, I can throw heavy stuff.” She made a face. “Or I could before, anyway.”
"Yeah, but just you watch. You get your powers back and next week it'll be... squishy marshmallow men that don't crush easily and can't be messed with at all. And then my sword won't work on them either. Really, that's not outside the realm of possibility." Dani snorted, because they were living in Orange County, and it did seem like anything at all could happen there these days.
Lorna giggled. “Then I really will give our charges a joint apiece and one of those creme brulee blowtorches and tell them to go to town.”
"That would be pretty amazing to witness. Damn it, now I'm kind of hoping we do get attacked by the stay puft marshmallow man." Dani laughed. It still felt so wonderful to do that. Lorna really put her at ease and she hadn't even smoked anything yet.
She patted her back pocket, "Speaking of that, your eighth is right here."
“Awesome.” Lorna said with a laugh. “I didn’t think that request through, though. I don’t want to smoke while I’m working unless I’m actually having an anxiety attack.” Which, to be fair, would probably happen the second a husk actually came near her or the building.
"It'd probably be bad if Wrex caught me smoking a joint right now, yeah," Dani nodded. She wasn't sure why she'd gone through with it, even, considering how bad an idea it was all around, "But I guess you could take it for just in case. I grabbed some for myself, but I'll have to pay you back in slave labor or something."
Lorna shrugged. “I couldn’t smoke it all, like I said. I mean, I could but it would take concerted effort, and I’m a recreational stoner. I don’t want it to become work.” She laughed a little. “Actually the funny thing is that my anxiety was getting better, back when I was running my shop. Then that stopped. . . being a thing. And it got worse again.” She shrugged. “But that’s depressing, so let’s talk about other stuff. What do you do for fun?”
"Uhm... I'm not really sure what I do for fun that you'd actually think was fun. Practice archery, mostly. Play pool, when I can afford it. I'm pretty boring," Dani replied, with a shrug. A lot of the things she used to do that were fun involved drinking, so that was right out.
Sure, the whole idea was to discover that you could still do a lot of those things and have fun without it, but she couldn't say she was there yet, "What do you and Alex do when you're not here or in Alaska?"
Lorna laughed. “I don’t think you want to hear about that. We’ve already scarred one roommate for life.” She was blushing, just a little. She didn’t think Mavis actually minded. “But separately he does parkour, and he works out, and stuff like that. I crochet and cook, and now I come up with lesson plans. I used to garden, but since I wrecked our house about a month back I haven’t been able to get it ready for planting.”
"I could help you with that. The planting stuff. Well, I'm better at getting things tilled and blocked out and ready than caring for things like house plants. I do better with outdoors gardens."
Dani took a long sip off her coffee and nudged Lorna with her elbow, "But you two have to have some kind of thing you do together besides sex, right?"
“Normal stuff like swimming and cooking, and he comes to help out here sometimes to hang out with me during our breaks.” She shrugged. “We’re around each other all the time when we’re not working.”
"I really miss cooking with someone," Dani replied, with a nod. It was one of the funnest things to do, as far as she was concerned. She still had bittersweet memories of all the dinners she'd cooked with Obi before she'd left.
"Swimming sounds like fun, too. You two are obviously way less boring than I am."
“We live on a house by the beach, swimming is pretty much mandatory. Though we do mostly do it for endurance training, anymore.” Lorna could hold her breath for over a minute, now.
"This is pretty embarrassing to say, considering I lived in the OC for a while before I left the first time, but... I haven't actually been to any of the beaches that often since I got here. And I don't do a lot of swimming. I think I need to fix that." Dani said, with a bit of a sheepish grin. It was really hard to believe, but she couldn’t remember ever getting a chance to do any swimming or anything before. Her work schedule had always conflicted.
Lorna laughed. “Well, next time we have a barbecue or something you’ll have to come by. Mavis hosted a beach party, oh she’s our roommate, before we left for Alaska and it was a lot of fun!”
"I think that might have been right before I showed up."
Dani sucked the last of her coffee out of her cup, loudly, then put it off to one side, "What if I came over to help you with some gardening and then we cooked up something and did some swimming some weekend?"
It was kind of a huge step in the direction of 'being social with people', but Lorna was laid back enough that she thought it couldn't go too badly.
“Probably, yeah.” Lorna said with a nod. “I’d love some help gardening. Ever since the fight at the vineyard our house has been under construction, I’m eager to get the yard and garden strips back in order. Swimming is nicest after some manual labor, anyway.”
"Alright, well. That sounds like a plan. When everything calms down for longer than three seconds anyway." Dani wrinkled her nose a bit, and added, "Or we can just pause in the middle of gardening to beat the shit out of something with shovels and hoes I guess."
Lorna sighed. “Gardening tools are uniquely suited to bashing heads in, mostly.” She didn’t like this husk thing one bit. “I can’t even sneak away for a smoke to deal with the stress of all this, for one thing. Which is pretty stressful in its own right.”
"If we could I'd be encouraging us to do it right now," Dani agreed, with a nod, "But yeah... not an option. I think we'll just have to focus on daydreaming about good meals and swimming and gardening for now. It might help relieve some of the stress to have something to look forward to like that. It helps, sometimes, for me."
“I agree. But first, we need to get these kids’ hands busy, before they mutiny.” Lorna hopped off the counter, smiling again. “There’s nothing like a room full of kids reciting how to do a double crochet to soothe frayed nerves.”
"Oh, you're going to be all kinds of amused, because I'm going to be reciting it, myself. I've never done crochet before, either."
Dani laughed a bit as she hopped down off the counter and tossed her drink cup towards a trash can, "Let's get started, this should be... an experience."